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A Visit to the Former Hills of Eastern Kentucky
H takes a while for it to really settle in on
your mind; to really absorb and even be
gin to comprehend the massive scale of
what's happened and is still happening.
Turn off everything you own, unplug your
fridge, never use a dryer again, stop using these
damn computer machines, turn down your heat,
and turn up the thermostat on your air con
ditioning. This is by far the most significantly
devastating ecological, environmental biological
disaster I have ever seen.
Rolling tree-clothed mountains become ter
raced grassland plateaus. Streams become what
we might call drainage ditches in the urban con
text, but out here, they are “reclaimed streams. -
A cascade of large boulders running straight
down a hillside into what's called a rock check
dam can't even begin to constitute one percent
of what is my notion of an Appalachian stream.
Wetland creation near the rock check dams is
lauded, and elk habitat creation, too, ignor
ing the Mad Cow-like disease known as Chronic
Wasting Disease that causes these mammals to
wither into the nether world. What an atrocity!
Recently, I visited the Appalachians of south
eastern Kentucky to assist with research being
conducted on a reclaimed surface coal mining
site to investigate the impact of surface coal
mining activities on headwater streams. Coal
is mined in the steep terrain of the eastern
Kentucky coal fields (as well as several other
Appalachian states) by various methods, includ
ing mountaintop removal (MTR). Very simply,
MTR entails blasting a mountain down to a
desirable (i.e., economically profitable) coal
layer and filling the hollows or valleys with the
excess rock overburden (referred to as mining
spoil), often completely covering headwater
streams. (Between 1985 and 2001, 700 miles
were covered!) The coal layer is then scraped
away and the process continues until all of the
desirable coal layers have been extracted. There
is then some form of reclamation that occurs, in
the way of returning the land to a state usable
by humans, but it would be an abhorrence to
refer to the area as being recovered or returned
to its natural state. I suspect that the mining
companies interpret reclamation or “'“storing" to
mean for use by humans, allowing for hunting.
cattle and elk grazing, and potentially subdivi
sions, never mind the myriad previous inhabit
ants (including, sometimes, humans!) that were
displaced.
While there, I helped sample “streams - for
two days at disturbed (more like catastrophically
perturbed) sites on reclaimed MTR mining sites.
If ever the word or idea of a “stream" was used
as a euphemism, this is the context in which
it's the case. What a degrading and collapsing
revelation it was to me to see such tragedy! I
was struck that ecological degradation of this
scale could be allowed to proliferate apparently
unfettered by any significant regulation. It would
seem, however, that the proliferation is more a
result of a lack of enforcement of legislation,
rather than a lack of actual legislation regard
ing such mining practices. A law passed in 1977
known as SMCRA (Surface Mining Control and
Reclamation Act) specifically targets surface
mining for regulation; however, current judicial
interpretations of the law from the Fourth Circuit
Court of Appeals undermine the integrity of the
original SMCRA lawmakers' intentions.
Reclaimed?
Basically, MTR sites look like the largest retail
big-box store development site you might ever
see, sometimes consisting of thousands of acres
of blasted mountains and filled valleys. The final,
or “reclaimed," products are reminiscent of large
retail developments, too, in the \ jy of being
terraced grassy areas with boulder-filled drainage
ditches that are somehow constituted as streams
by legislative bureaucrats. There is very little
effort put in to recreating the original forested
scene or habitats of Appalachia; rather, the coal
companies' focus is on stabilizing the areas to
prevent massive floods and landslides, which
sometimes occur anyway.
In comparison, “reclaimed" MTR mining sites
look most like the Dakotas' rolling spacious
plains and hills to me—very much like them.
Specifically, while in Kentucky I felt almost as
though I was back in southwestern North Dakota,
hiking through Theodore Roosevelt National Park,
or stealing away in the night to camp for free at
Badlands National Park in western South Dakota.
The resemblance overwhelmed me so much my
first day there that I actually felt some allure,
some attraction and understanding of the whole
place. Perhaps it is simply those wide-open
spaces that E.O. Wilson says the human mind is
“hard-wired" to find aesthetically alluring.
Think of it this way: a new ecosystem. I sup
pose it's all we can do for the already “reclaimed"
sites. Maybe I'll buy some land and build a house
on top of a great Western grassland plateau and
study the new ecology, right there in eastern
Kentucky. That's what they want of this mess,
subdivisions and home sites. If anything, there's
more to study here than could be accomplished
by the lifetimes of a million ecologists, so it has
an appeal for the would-be "catastrophe ecolo
gist. - Applying the theory of island biogeography
(the idea that separate habitats function as “is
lands" for colonization from surrounding areas),
the colonization of the newly-created MTR eco
system and all the intricate interactions among
and Detween the colonizing species and their
newfound habitat could be studied with seeming
endlessness.
Not Worth the Cost
There are those who may choose to point
toward the positive aspects of MTR mining, such
as the jobs it creates or the power it supplier our
energy-driven economic system. However, the
MTR method actually depletes coal miner jobs by
replacing the earth-bound coal miner with 2,000-
plus-ton earth-moving machines known as drag
lines. It is also said to be safer, but excepting
the recent hyper-focus of the major news media
on coal mining accidents, the actual occurrence
of accidents related to more traditional-style coal
mining has gone down over the past few decades.
Further. MTR dynamite explosions are known to
cause damage to homes by way of cracked foun
dations and walls, and to other infrastructure in
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